In this essay [Digital Art: Pixel, Algorithm, Code, Programming, Data], we reached a theoretical framework that could withstand a hyperdisciplinary analysis and encompass one of the characteristics that both electronic literature and digital art share: the transfer and transformation processes. In order to recognize these processes we used the concept of transduction to perform a theoretical migration capable of supporting these aspects: the transducer function.
Swapping between a critique of textuality and a critique of visuality we analyze two of the most important genres of digital art: net.art and digital installation. Firstly, we investigate the concept of infoduct as a channel of information dissemination in the virtual environment and the characteristics of periphery and discontinuity in digital image, composed by pixels, in opposition to punctum, studium and continuity, key characteristics in analog photographic image, composed by dots, whose concepts were identified and coined by Roland Barthes in La Chambre Claire (1980). Secondly – by focusing on the nomination of the artwork and the relevance of the title in its intelligibility, from the abstract movement until nowadays – we reflect on the use of code as an emerging language, which reveals a new aesthetic sensibility, e.g. the k. series by André Sier. Finally, the third and fourth points develop the analysis of the transducer processes in the works by Pavel Braila, R. Luke DuBois and Sier, considering the aesthetics of data transfer and recreation in mutant works as a common phenomenon to art that uses programmable and networking media. In digital art, the transducer function originates a pictorial, visual and aesthetic transformation, which we observe in SSB, Hard Data, or 32-bit Wind Machine , and erects the artist as a data filter and data miner.
In this investigation, we highlight mechanisms, patterns, languages ​​and common motifs: authorship, user, cybertext, surface, infoduct, interactivity, pixel, algorithm, code, programming, network, software and data.